While the Jews had nothing to do with Turkish governmental actions toward the Armenians in Adana, the Jews were blamed as responsible by Armenian victims and society. Two yeas later, a lengthy article was published by The London Times by its correspondent pinning the blame for the deaths of 30,000 Armenians in the Adana region on the Jews. Past Jewish involvement in Salonika in the formation of the Committee for Union and Progress (CUP) was blamed for the impetus of massacres of Bulgarians, Armenians in Adana in 1909, and ongoing operations against the Albanians. This was an historically ludicrous accusation since the Jews had already lost influence in CUP and furthermore, the Jews together with Armenians, Bulgarians, Deunme, had helped in the formation of the Young Turks, but all the other non-Muslim groups were isolated from the Young Turk governmental regime. Only the Jews were blamed for Turkish governmental action toward minorities and rebelling nationalist religious minorities, but not Armenians, Bulgarians, and others who were equally as active in the underground Young Turk movement.

The article published in The London Times on 11 July 1911 by its Vienna Correspondent noted that the Jews supplied the brains for the Committee movement (CUP) and “they will be made to incur the odium for events like the Adana massacres ….”, but nonetheless called for an appeal from the humanitarian Jews of the Western world to the Jewish organizations of Turkey in the belief that this would do more to control Torgut Shevkat and the Turkish regime than European diplomacy. On one hand, the Ottoman Jews are condemned and blamed for the ills of the Young Turk regime, and even regime changes following the April 1909 revolt against CUP, and are naively perceived, together with their Jewish brethren in Western Europe and beyond, as having an imaginary powerful international influence and greatly misperceived influence on the Ottoman regime. Both aspects of this assertion resonate, in its background, anti-Semitic conspiracy theories of Jewish control of the world. Christian accusations in Europe or in the Ottoman Empire against the Jews for responsibility of the Adana massacre of tens of thousands Armenians emanate from the two thousand year theological polemic between Judaism and Christianity, and in this case particularly Eastern Orthodox animosity toward the Jews , and accusations against the Jews as “Christ-killers’ and traitors against Christ and Christianity; as well as the Jewish refusal to accept Christianity and the belief in a messianic Jesus. In Syria, the Christian Arabs and Armenians exemplified vehement hatred against the Jews as a consequence of religious biases. In general the Armenian claims against the Ottoman Jews during this time stemmed from the very limited involvement of Jews in the Ottoman army during the mass massacre of Armenians in 1894-6, and economic rivalry.

Since the mid-19th century in Asia Minor and Anatolia, the Greek-Orthodox and to a lesser extent, the Armenians, have lanced the blood libel accusation against the Jews in dispute with Jewish allegiance with the Ottoman regime, and Jewish opposition to Greek and Armenian nationalism and their objection to support and participate in Greek and Armenian nationalist and separatist movements.

The Armenians poured out their wrath against the Jews usually at Easter time, and whether on Good Friday, at the burning of the effigy of Judas procession following the main mass, or during that time of the year, by instigating a blood libel against innocent Jews. Several blood libels of Armenians against the Jews are known ranging from the 16th to the 20th centuries in the Ottoman Empire. While the Greek-Orthodox frequently instigated blood libels against the Jews throughout the Ottoman Empire and in particular in the second half of the 19th century, it was rarer for the Armenians to instigate blood libels against the Jews. Following the 1894-1896 massacres of Armenians, where no historical evidence has been ever presented of Jewish military or civilian killing of Armenians, the Armenians mounted their aggression against the Jews.

In the Ottoman-Greek War of 1897, the Jews had to be taken by boat by the Great Powers from Crete in order to escape violent attack from the local Armenian and Greek-Orthodox Christians. In the 19th century Ottoman security forces intervened frequently to protect Jews from Armenians, Greek-Orthodox, and Arabs.

In 1899 the Greek-Orthodox and Armenians protested to Sultan Abdul Hamid the building of a Jewish synagogue in Haydarpasha, Istanbul. The Sultan not only did not give in to Christian hate, but provided military protection for the opening of its doors. In gratitude to the Sultan the synagogue was named Hemdat Israel.

In 1901 in Istanbul, the Armenians instigated a blood libel against the Jews; falsely accusing them of killing an Armenian child in order to take its blood to make matzot, unleavened bread, for the Jewish Passover holiday. Since early Christianity, the imagery in this pagan ritual was used against the Jews in efforts to incite against them and continue blaming them for Christ’s crucifixion. When the blood libel rumor was spread, Christians would orchestrate the disappearance of a child and often murder the Christian child in order to blame the Jews for the crime. Then the Christian mob would attack and muder Jews, and pillage their homes and businesses. The allegations were reprinted in Christian newspapers and in their respective communal bulletins, and in such a manner the Armenian and Greek-Orthodox masses could be incited to attack Ottoman Jewish enclaves. No historical depictions are available for the 1901 blood libel in Istanbul, but it was listed by the historians Abraham Galante, Jacob Landau, Moshe Maoz, and later by Sanford Shaw and Yitzchak Kerem. Ben Yaakov wrote about the Armenian violent mob behavior against the Jews in Turkey and Iraq in this period.

Jewish retaliation against the Armenians for their heinous accusations toward Jews throughout the Ottoman Empire could be seen when many Jews assisted the attacks of Kurds and Lazzes on the Armenian Quarter of Istanbul in 1896 and 1908. This in return increased the enmity of the Armenians against the Jews.

Not only was the accusation against Ottoman Jews for responsibility for the massacre of 30,000 Armenians in the Adana region in 1909 absurd and a symptom of anti-Semitism by the press, or that of Christian missionaries and diplomats, Armenians, and Greek-Orthodox in Ottoman Turkey, but it is still used today by anti-Semitic neo-Nazis, anti-Semitic Armenian Jewish Holocaust deniers and hate mongers, and thousands of lunatics surfing the internet for inspiration from hate.

1 Vienna Correspondent for The London Times, “Jews and the Situation in Albania”, The London Times, 11 July 1911, 5.